70. Demon Dragon

Lilith stood in the very heart of Morris, a pale ember planted in the city’s storm-battered breast.

The old palace ruins had become Elasha’s blood-channel, a scar cut through stone. Blood braided with rain, ripping the calm air like torn silk. It drove off every living thing like a cold tide. Only Lilith could walk that forbidden ground, a lone white shadow under thunderclouds.

The Little White Dragon chose to act, the choice a spark in a clenched chest. She couldn’t unleash herself in the city’s core. Even a whisper of Taint would seep like ink, and it wouldn’t turn Vampires into monsters, but it’d scar their bodies like frostbite.

Lilith spread her half-ruined wings, a broken crescent set against the slate sky. Gray Taint replaced flesh, packing the White Dragon’s bone-wings with shadow like ash in snow. She flared both wings with a tremor of iron and wind, then glanced back at the Black Knight beside her, a helmeted phantom carved from night.

The Black Knight’s face hid under steel, a moon behind cloud. Lilith couldn’t read that face, yet she felt the quiet push of support, a steady hand on her back like warmth in winter.

She nodded once, the motion a leaf answering wind. Then she beat her wings hard and rose, a white fleck stitching upward into the bruised heavens.

“Hnh-hnh, I’ve been dying to try this,” she breathed, a grin like a blade’s glint pushing aside grief.

On a battlefield, sorrow has no soil. Negative feelings are mud on the boots. Lilith had her way to tune herself, a ritual like incense before war: tie the thing she’d do to the things she loved.

The Little White Dragon drew her Broken Sword—now only a hilt, a memory of steel. She slid the Shattered Ark into her belt, a shard locked snug like a keystone in a gate.

She cupped her left hand, and a mass of flesh coiled there, dark gray and bloodred braided like storm and sunset. She shaped it square, a cube like a stamped seal, and slotted it onto her sword-hilt like a gem.

“Transform!”

The Little White Dragon shouted, joy ringing like bronze. She yanked her hilt with a flourish, a child pulling thunder’s cord.

She’d been a geek for live-action hero shows, a heart that loved masks and bright calls. Since she reached this continent, she’d wanted to play it that way. Now the sky offered her a stage.

White sanctity washed over her body, a clean fire sweeping like dawn. Moments later, her forearms grew layered white scales, a sheen like frost on river stone. Her long fingers stretched further, joints thickening like knotted wood, palm-bones warping. Rounded nails honed sharp, turning into claws like cold iron.

A fine mesh of scales climbed her slender waist, starlight on porcelain. From her lower back, white bone thrust out like spears, forming hard spines that hung behind her like a bristling crest.

Her pure white wings swelled, bones and membranes braced like bridge and sail. Tough scales sprouted along the white, a lace of shard-bright plates over frail skin, snow set with flint.

White Dragon’s bones and scales bloomed across her face, a helm of ivory sealing over her little head like a disciplined crown.

She had half-unsealed her bloodline, a half-dragon form—a river only half thawed, power glinting under ice.

It still wasn’t enough. Her heart beat like a drum in a temple. More strength waited behind the door.

Lilith pressed her left hand to her chest. Dark red sigils lit under her white skin, a script like coals waking. At last, they lifted their true power like a banner in wind.

Twisted, dark-red flesh climbed her body, Taint creeping like spilled ink over snow. Gray filth and bloodred force cut into white like a conquering army, red and ash staking ground on porcelain.

In a blink, the Little White Dragon stood sheathed in Taint, a chrysalis of dusk over pearl.

Her bone-wings got wrapped in living meat. The left wing swelled crimson, a storm-ripe fruit. The right wing shrank into a dim, withered blade. They looked wrong for flight, but speed roared from them like a gale tearing a cliff.

Muscular tendrils replaced the bone-spines at her hips, stout tentacles weaving a war-skirt like braided river reeds. They draped her unchanged legs with shadow, a twilight curtain stirring in the rain.

Veins coiled around her hands, scarlet tubes hot with pumping blood, life drumming like hooves. She didn’t need to sense it; she knew her strength now bucked like a wild beast.

Her Broken Sword got swallowed by living meat, then re-forged by blood and bone into a greatsword taller than her by half a head, a slab of fang and flesh. She held it like a twig, effortless, a breeze palming a leaf.

She hovered for a heartbeat, breath steady as a bell, letting her suddenly risen power settle like silt in a river.

Then Lilith shot off, a gray meteor under storm, a whoosh tearing a path toward two figures locked in battle.

Elasha split Eve’s attack with one clean stroke, steel talking like thunder. Eve’s long blade etched a shallow wound on Elasha, a red thread on pale skin. Elasha took half the Demon’s hand off, a neat cut like harvest.

No doubt—Elasha held the advantage, a mountain over a stream.

Elasha’s battle experience ran deep, a thousand years like rings in a tree. Memory held wars like charcoal sketches. If she needed a skill, she learned it, swift as fire catching oil.

She saw the gulf between herself and Eve, a canyon across a plain. Early on, she’d weighed it like stones. Now, after trading strikes, she was sure: the Demon trying to break Morris didn’t have the power to beat her.

Elasha still wasn’t happy. The cost was blood—too much blood, too fast. It felt like pouring wine into sand.

Eve’s ability devoured Elasha’s precious blood like a thirsty field. Each second of their clash burned Elasha’s magic like dry kindling. Morris’s magic reserves and the blood in the pool were still ample, a lake before dusk. But under the Black Sun, any preparation felt thin as paper. Elasha didn’t trust a long grind here.

The Demon knew it too. Eve played for time, dragging the fight like an anchor, aiming to bleed Elasha out.

The Vampire Princess had answers, a fan of tricks behind silk. But she didn’t dare pull a storm-sized power this close to the clouds. If she tore the rainclouds, the whole plan would crumble like clay in flood.

So Elasha and Eve locked into stalemate, two blades humming under rain.

Then a third force cut in, a hawk diving into a snake’s coil.

Elasha felt the surge from below, a rising tide under stone. She slid back in an instant, space opening like a door.

Eve was half a beat slow, a drum misstruck. She couldn’t dodge. She lifted her long blade and took the hit head-on, steel grinding like ice.

Her blade smashed into a gigantic bone greatsword. Eve’s ever-victorious weapon finally met a wall, buzzing a wounded “whumm” as cracks laced like spiderwebs across its edge.

“Lilith?”

Elasha stared at the sudden figure, wrapped in a thick, evil aura like smoke around a pyre. But the signature white silhouette and the scent of blood told her the truth as clean as snow—she knew who stood there.

“Don’t mind me. Go do what you’re supposed to do.”

Lilith flicked Eve’s blade aside, a sharp parry like a sparrow’s wing. The greatsword swung again and slammed into Eve’s chest, a thunder-blow.

A brutal scar opened along Eve’s body, red as sunset. She shuddered and got hurled away like a leaf in gale.

“Morris’s matters should be handled by Morris,” Lilith said, voice steady as stone. “And matters of outsiders…”

She spread her wings wide, a storm-bird lifting, and arrowed after the flung Demon like lightning chasing thunder.

“…are for outsiders to resolve. She’s mine.”